Lewd and Scandalous Books of the Long Eighteenth Century

Although the Rare Books Collection at Monash University does not
specialise in the collection of erotica, it is a testament to the
breadth and quality of the collection that Dr Patrick Spedding has
been able to put together an exhibition that so fully illuminates the
erotic book trade. The exhibition focusses on "Lewd and Scandalous
Books" from the eighteenth century and the reprints of these
works - many banned for hundreds of years - throughout the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries.

With the exception of John Cleland’s Fanny Hill, many of the books
Spedding has chosen are likely to be unfamiliar to visitors. And,
although many of the topics, tropes and themes are familiar - the
sex-scandals and vice of the rich and famous - these works are also
likely to have lost some of their sting in a world where the public
figures are no longer known and when three or four keystrokes can
unleash a flood of pornographic images. It is almost inevitable, then,
that many of the books exhibited will seem a little tame and
restrained, even quaint and cute, to our eyes.

But this exhibition contains rare literary and visual material that
has been restricted and suppressed and which circulated for more than
two centuries only in tiny numbers in privately printed and
clandestine editions. And, liberal as we undoubtedly are today, much
of it still has the power to shock. Even the most worldly among us would
hesitate to quote the purple passages of Catullus, Rochester or Wilkes
in public and nobody would place an unexpurgated edition of the works
of these authors on the shelves of a high-school library.